More on the city’s tree-cutting settlement

We published a story today about the city of Houston’s recent focus on enforcing its rules protecting trees in the public right of way and on public land.

In August, a townhome developer paid the city $300,000 to restore Woodland Park northwest of downtown, nearly an acre of which had been scraped bare in what the developer said was a miscommunication with a contractor. The city also has sued a South Main motel owner for what City Attorney David Feldman called “a case of severe over-pruning” that killed street trees.

Most recently, a developer and subcontractor agreed to pay the city $225,000 for illegally taking down two trees, one of them a 100-year-old live oak. The story was about the trend and not that incident, so we didn’t call the developer, and no one saw the fax the developer’s lawyer, Brian Cweren, sent over, so I thought I’d post their take here:

“Signature City Homes is committed to building upscale homes. A mistake was made while two sites were being prepared for development. This was not an intentional act. Signature City Homes did the right thing by the citizens of Houston as well as the customers of its presold homes – even it if meant paying far more in settlement than the trees were actually worth. Rather than argue over the value, age or ownership of the trees, Signature City Homes reached a settlement to bring this matter to a prompt resolution.”